Seattle-based builder Alice Finch has painstakingly recreated Harry Potter’s Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry using 400,000 LEGO bricks! This massive project took a whole year to build, and Finch recently unveiled it in a 75-photo online gallery. Read on for a look at her meticulously detailed scenes from the Harry Potter universe.

The project features architecturally accurate recreations of the Harry Potter sets such as the Great Hall, the Quidditch Courtyard, the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom and the bridge over the Clock Tower. About 10,000 LEGO bricks were used for the L-shaped, nearly 4 meters long structure of the school’s central staircase alone.

The actual building of the replica was preceded by an extensive research of the books and movie sets, paying attention to the smallest details- from the old fashioned slide projector in Lupin’s Defense Against the Dark Arts class to the wood paneling in the charms classroom. After visiting the Harry Potter studio in London and places in Oxford where the movie was made, Alice was able to get detailed photos of panoramas and small architectural details.

The Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry replica that just might be the largest LEGO structure built by a single person, won both “Best in Show” as well as “People’s Choice” as BrickCon 2012.